Oregon Men’s Basketball Stats Review: Defense

Last week, I reviewed what the stats had to say about Oregon’s offensive performance this past season. Today I will be doing the same, but for the defensive side of the ball.

There are fewer raw statistics recorded for basketball defense, but I collected those available from sports-reference.com. For consistency, I only used statistics from Pac-12 conference games. I compared the Ducks’ primary contributors to all Pac-12 players over the past three full seasons, censoring any player who had less than 100 minutes on the court during conference play.

The numbers displayed below are normalized to reflect what would happen if a player had 40 minutes of average production. For example, “STL” is calculated by taking all the steals a player recorded in conference games, dividing by their total playing time, then multiplying by 40. The results are color coded, with green being more productive, yellow toward the median for the data set, and red less productive.

Below is a similar chart for the overall team’s defensive production per game the past several seasons. The year indicates the calendar year in which the season ended.

Tristan Holmes and sports-reference.com

Finally, I compiled information for the per-game offensive production Pac-12 teams had when they played Oregon the past three seasons. Keep in mind that these offensive numbers are for the Ducks’ opponents, so green represents less offensive production, yellow near the median of the data set, and red more offensive production.

Tristan Holmes and sports-reference.com

Based on these numbers, a few things stood out to me.

• It is tempting to criticize coach Altman for letting this year’s team slip from being an above average Pac-12 defensive team to one that was well below average. It is true the 2023-2024 Ducks were on the wrong side of the median in most defensive categories. But this has to be viewed from the context of the numerous injuries the team was dealing with. Oregon lacked a defensive presence in the paint until N’Faly Dante got healthy. Even with him, Oregon relied primarily on a seven man rotation for much of conference play and fatigue is extremely detrimental to defensive performance.
• Speaking of Dante, I cannot say it enough times: he was the heart and soul of this team. In addition to being the most productive player on offense (outside of three point shooting), he led the way in every defensive category as well as rebounds. His early absence, as well as Mookie Cook’s lost season, is the best explanation for the fall off in defensive rebounding this in 2023-2024.
• After I posted my offensive article hythloday wondered whether Jadrian Tracey’s defensive performance justified him having more minutes in conference play than Kwame Evans. The individual numbers would seem to indicate otherwise. As both players are forwards it makes sense to compare their offensive and defensive player ratings. These numbers are an estimate of how many points a player scores on offense and gives up on defense, respectively, every 100 possession. Evans has the edge at 118.0 to 104.4 on offense and 104.0 to 113.0 on defense, respectively. The only conclusion I can draw is that Altman and his staff made an uncharacteristic error in not keeping Evans on the court as much as they could.